Of Which Two Worlds?
by BenRG
Summary: My first A2A story. At the end of season 2, Alex Drake was a woman being pulled to two times by competing feelings. Which way will so go? And will the choice be made for her by the forces of destiny? Canon ships & hints of Gene/Alex
1. Many Happy Returns?

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Ashes to Ashes

Of Which Two Worlds?

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Disclaimer

'Ashes to Ashes' was created by Kudos Film & Television for BBC Worldwide. All characters and situations from the series are the copyright property of the above. No breach of copyright or trademark is intended. This is a not-for-profit fan work for free distribution through the World-wide Web.

**Author's Notes**

This is a story that suddenly came to me in a flash of inspiration today. The first chapter is more-or-less a summary of what I think may take place in Season 3 of 'Ashes to Ashes'. The second chapter… is the beginning of the first episode of _Season 4_.

Censor: T – A little Gene and Alex potty mouth but that is all

**Chapter 1 – Many Happy Returns?**

Detective Inspector Alexandra 'Alex' Drake decided that she hated fate, destiny and all their ilk. If she ever met one of the so-called 'Powers That Be' she would stick Gene Hunt's beloved 44-Magnum revolver up their metaphorical arse and give them a lead and cordite enema.

It had all seemed so very, very simple. Gene Hunt, Ray, Chris, Shaz, Luigi… They were all hallucinations, right? Her subconscious had latched onto poor Sam Tyler's own hallucinations in a similar situation and had created an elaborate mindscape (based on her childhood in the early 1980s) as a refuge from the horror of being shot in the head. All she had to do was find a way out of that illusory world and she would be back in her home time of 2007 and her daughter, Molly, who was truly the only thing that gave her life meaning on some days.

Only… it wasn't that simple. The 'hallucinations' stayed firmly outside all the supposed limits of the Jungian archetypes that they were supposed to be. They seemed so _complete_, so _human_, so very, very _real_.

Ray Carling, for all his bumbling attempts at being a 'macho man' and a copper firmly on the grey line between honest and bent was really a bumbling, honest and somewhat naive teddy-bear who, frankly, needed his friends to keep him functional. You could not hope to have a more loyal and more good-natured friend.

Chris Skelton was a great kid. Oh, he wasn't the brightest light in the house, no doubt about that. However, Alex also didn't doubt that the kid was a _believer_ in the job and in the idea of law enforcement. He had a big, soft heart, as anyone who had watched his interactions with Shazza would tell you.

Ah, Shaz! WPC (hopefully, given her talent, W_D_C soon enough) Sharon Granger. The mousy and somewhat introverted young woman had filled a surprising gap in Alex's emotional life, one that she had not realised that she even had. The young woman was her baby sister in all but blood. Alex had tried to build up her self-esteem and help her break out of her culturally-imposed submissiveness (Feminism having only really just started to take hold in early-1980s Britain).

Then there was Gene. The Gene-Genie. The Mancurian Lion.

Yes, then there was _Gene_.

Detective Chief Inspector Gene Hunt was everything that Sam Tyler had described him to be. An arrogant, overbearing, egotistical, misogynistic Neanderthal with Philistine and bigoted tendencies. Or, at least, that is what she told herself. What she hadn't been ready to see was the immense _pain_ in that angry blue-grey gaze. The deep chivalry and personal nobility of a man who had _wanted_ to believe in the primacy of good over evil but had seen too much _shit_ bubbling out of the sewers day after day to be sure of that any longer. A man who saved her _life_ time and time again. A man who, when he held her, made her feel so very, very _safe_, something that she had not felt for so very long.

What the hell did it say about her subconscious mind that she would invent an _anti-hero_ to be her knight in battered-but-serviceable-armour?

What the hell did it say about her emotional health that he became closer than a friend? That she found herself _flirting_ with him during that surreal sojourn in the period 1981-82. That, if he had made the offer, she would have willingly taken him as her _lover_?

The last crumbling wall of her resistance against this strange televisual fantasy version of the beginning of the 1980s collapsed in that horrible, surreal, utterly compelling moment when she learnt that her _father_ had been responsible for the bomb blast that had left her an orphan. And, as she saw her weeping, hysterical 10-year-old self in Gene Hunt's arms in the aftermath of the explosion… _then _she understood _why_ it was that his arms made her feel so very, very safe.

Yet there was still Molly and there were still the persistent, impossible visions that confirmed that, yes, she was indeed a woman out of her own time. That, some twenty-five years into the future, she had another life and a daughter whom she loved so dearly and wanted to hold again so very, very much.

Was it possible for someone to exist in two separate time frames? It sounded like bad sci-fi, but the appearance in her life of Detective Inspector Tom Summers was the final horrifying proof. Somehow, she found herself caught in the path of Summers' homicidal obsession to somehow redeem himself from his past involvement in the endemic police corruption of this era. This reached its climax in a collapse of Alex's relationship with Gene that shattered her heart and left her longing for home. Finally, Alex and Summers faced each other on the scene of the notorious Lord Douglas Lane bullion robbery and Alex was on the edge of _begging_ the other time-lost policeman to pull the trigger. Whether her 'death' would send her to oblivion or send her to Molly, she didn't care, because in a world where Gene did not trust her…

Then Gene appeared out of nowhere, her knight errant once again. And Alex realised that she truly _was_ in love with that man.

Alex hated irony as much as she hated fate and destiny. However, a cynical part of her had to admit that there was a certain sick humour to being gunned down by Gene Hunt _by mistake_ after a hostage situation went very bad.

As Alex looked up at the faces of her horrified squad-mates, she realised that she _would_ miss them all. She loved _Juliet Bravo_, _The Gentle Touch_ and similar detective shows when she was little; running with Gene and the gang had been as good as being in a 1980s cop show!Finally, the world went white.

Alex awoke in a hospital room in 2007. Molly was there to welcome her home. Alex was able to bear witness as Tom Summers' body was wheeled past her room, as dead in this time as he was in 1982, although she doubted the COD here in 2007 was a gunshot wound to the chest.

And there, things ought to have ended.

Which is why Gene's appearance on the TV set in her room was so very, very unwelcome.

* * *

All Alex had wanted, upon returning to what she resolutely insisted to herself was her _real_ life in the year 2007, was to slot back into her old existence and forget that the whole '1982' thing had ever happened.

Unfortunately, things didn't work out that way.

It wasn't just that Gene and the rest of the crew made regular appearances on her TV and her PC monitor at work, begging her to wake up from her coma, telling her that she was missed and that Gene was in trouble. There were also the reminders on her PDA that she was scheduled to act as Shaz's matron of honour at her wedding to Chris. Then there was Ray's gruff voice heard on her car radio, telling her about the hunt for Gene, who he could only refer to as 'that _bastard_'. No, leftovers from her experience were to be expected, no matter how much she devoutly hoped they _were_ just flash-backs to a comatose hallucination.

What worried her was that… she no longer felt at _home_ in 2007.

Evan… He had been a father to her in many ways after her parents' murder (_murder-suicide_, as she now knew for certain – he had confirmed it although she wasn't able to tell him how she knew). However, having had the oily little creep _hit on her_ back in the 1980s necessarily changed her perception of him. No matter how much she tried, she couldn't escape the fact that this was the creepy and decidedly hypocritical man whose affair with her mother had driven her father to his desperate act. She couldn't forget the irritating lawyer who, more than once, had blocked investigations and worked tirelessly to get the worst of the worst _toe-rags_ back on the streets, as if their rights somehow trumped the rights of all the poor sods they would hurt…

All in all, she knew that she would never be able to see Evan the same way again. There was an icy wall between them now. He knew it, even Molly knew it. Both adults were quite surprised when the 13-year-old girl coldly informed her 'Uncle Evan' that it would be best if he didn't visit for a while because 'Mum obviously doesn't like you anymore'.

Then there was the job.

Alex was a career cop. Her parents' death had left her with the firmest devotion to the cause of law and order – to make the streets safe and make sure that no child should ever suffer her fate. Perhaps that, more than anything else, had been the cause of her extreme guilt during her time in the 1980s (and she was more and more convinced that it _was_ the _real_ 1980s) – that she had doomed Molly to her fate.

The problem was that, having experience police work in the 1980s, it was difficult to get back into the flow of things in the early 21st Century. Oh, there was technology that Gene would have killed to have access to – helicopters and patrol cars fitted with sensors that could see through walls and automatically identify stolen cars, fingerprints and mug-shot databases, DNA profiling and other forensic tools that made the '80s look like the stone age.

However, it was a very different culture. Police in the 21st Century seemed to be continually walking on egg-shells when it came to interviews and custody. There was a perpetual fear of being accused of racism or some other form of bigotry. Lawyers could sit there smugly and get their clients released because someone hadn't filled in the right form before searching their car or because they had said something 'potentially prejudicial'. Worse, there were _too many_ targets, too much form-filling and time-marking. Uniforms were spending their time patrolling for easy speeding or disorderly behaviour tickets because you were judged on your number of 'cases solved', not on whether you had actually prevented a crime or caught serious criminals. Oh, the occasional traffic nick might find a blagger on the way to a job, but that was rare indeed.

Even if you caught one of the toe rags and were able to make the charges stick, they would be let off with a warning or less. What was the point of trying to keep the streets clean when the penal system's only apparent function was to give them room and board for a few weeks and then recycle the little _shits _onto the streets again?

A really nasty case could still get the detectives in her CID section motivated to work hard in solving a case but, mostly, their attitude was: 'why bother'? Even if they could get someone to talk without their statements being ruled out because of 'undue pressure', the beak would just release the little bastards. The endemic of youth-on-youth crime and murder was allowed to continue unchecked. So long as it didn't spill over into the 'nicer' neighbourhoods or create too much of a stink in the media, the estates were allowed to fester and consume themselves in an orgy of drugs and violence unhindered by the forces of law and order.

Alex had already been bumped back onto desk duty due to 'psychological instability' after shouting at her superiors about 'pussy footing' with the local street gangs. She figured that only her recent near escape from death and her superb skill as a forensic detective prevented her from getting suspended when she caught a little teenage _monster_ of a pusher, who was selling his filth to _babies_ at a local school. She practically smashed the little bastard's _face _through the interview room table when he gave her lip. Hearing Gene Hunt's warm and dangerous words of approval didn't help her state of mind at all.

No, all in all, Alex's return to the 21st Century had been nothing like what she had hoped. In some ways, she had begun to understand why Sam had killed himself. That other world, that past world, had been so very much simpler and easier to live in. The shades of grey and the creeping sense of hopelessness were so much darker and less easy to endure now.

Of course, she had one thing that Sam lacked. She had a rock to cling to. She had Molly.

* * *

Alex's temper had been steadily decaying ever since she had been returned to duty. People _thought_ it was the after-effects of her close brush with death. They were almost right. It was actually Gene's increasingly desperate state, barely able to keep one step ahead of the hounds chasing him down for the attempted murder of his DI, Alex Drake. That Gene and Alex had been so publicly and violently at odds the last time they had been together in the office only served to confirm the suspicion that the notoriously quick-tempered Mancurian detective had taken the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.

The combined strain of returning to the 21st Century, her estrangement with Evan, the sudden existential crisis of faith she was having with her vocation and the clear strain that her ill-temper was inflicting on poor, blameless Molly was telling. It wasn't surprising that Alex wasn't taking care of herself; she was surviving on sausage, veggie pancake roll and chips, alcohol and coffee most days. No one was particularly surprised when Alex, in the middle of coldly dressing down two under-performing detective constables, had a fit and lost consciousness in the middle of the CID office.

Alex wasn't surprised when she woke up in her hospital bed in 1982.

It was surprisingly easy to convince Ray and the Chief Super that Gene had shot her by mistake. Within hours the net had been cast for that Irish _skank_, Jeanette. However, given that weeks had passed, Alex was confident that the blonde woman had fled the country.

After release from hospital, the team escorted her back to her rooms over Luigi's restaurant and bar, all smiles. The last one to leave her doorstep was Gene. "Thanks for comin' back for me, Bolly," the gruff Mancurian said.

"You would have done the same for me, Guv," she replied.

The big man grunted, snorted and huffed in that adorable way of his when he had been caught being noble or affectionate. "Course I would! Looks bad for a DCI to lose too many of the bodies on his watch," he grumbled before looking back at her, remembered fear and horror tugging at his features. "Duck the next time!"

Gene turned to leave but Alex grabbed his arm. "Gene," she said seriously. This caught Hunt up short. Alex rarely used his given name as he rarely used hers; it was an intimacy that made them both nervous. "Gene, I'm sorry."

"Sorry?" Gene was genuinely surprised at being offered an apology by his self-assured and independent-minded DI.

"For ever thinking that you were my enemy," she explained. "You _are_ the reason I'm stuck here, Gene Hunt, but not in a bad way. Never think it is in a bad way." Alex cupped Gene's cheek in her hand. On a whim, the black-haired woman leaned forward and laid a gentle kiss on the corner of the man's mouth. He tasted of booze, tobacco, cologne and of _Gene_.

Gene blushed in a way that Alex swore ought to be impossible and she smiled mischievously as his face hardened into the granite expression that terrified innumerable villains throughout his patch. "Well, that's good to know, Bolly," he said roughly. "Can't have the team pulling in different directions, can we?" The man stepped back and Alex did not try to close the distance again, realising that he felt vulnerable and needed the distance to maintain his balance. She knew that Gene had not had any kind of serious relationship since his wife divorced him in the disastrous emotional aftermath of Sam Tyler's death in the line of duty years previously. She imagined that his emotions were troubling him now.

Gene turned to leave and Alex began to close the door of her flat. "Alex?"

Alex froze for a second before opening the door again. "Yes Guv?"

"I wish I could believe you, all that stuff about the future," the big man said. "After Sam was right about so much… I _ought_ to believe you… but it's hard." Gene sighed, looked down at his shoes and shifted for a few seconds before switching to a safer topic. "Look, Bolls, we'll talk tomorrow, yeah?" Alex nodded. Gene's face softened and there was that grim half-smile that she found so fascinating. "Okay, you'll be on light duty for a while, but there's too much going on around the patch to spare you right now, so you'll be in the office in time for your shift. Got that?"

Alex nodded again and smiled. "Goodnight, Guv," she said.

Gene Hunt grunted, nodded and was on his way. There was a bottle of scotch with his name on it tonight. He had a lot of hard thinking to do, both about his current DI and one he had years previously. It was the sort of thinking that a man didn't want to do sober.

Inside her flat, Alex was staring at her TV screen in a mixture of horror and fascination. She was looking at her squad of alleged detectives in 2007 hovering around as the camera, clearly substituting for her own POV was loaded onto an ambulance. She saw Molly run over and clamber up onto the ambulance – someone had clearly driven her over from her school, God bless whoever that was. No matter what Alex did, she knew she would not be able to cut off Molly's tearful pleas for her to wake up. After all, the TV was already turned off and unplugged from the wall.

On autopilot, Alex changed into her fine scarlet silk pyjamas and crawled into bed. Her emotions were at war. There was pleasure at seeing Gene's name cleared. There was that incredible sense of family and community that she realised that she _always_ felt around the team, something that she now realised she had not felt since her parents' deaths. There was a degree of relief at _touching_ Gene again that she didn't _want_ to analyse. However, there was also the guilt – the guilt that she was again separated from Molly and not knowing if she would ever be able to get back to her daughter ever again.

Her body racked with sobs, Alex Drake slipped off into a restless sleep.

She was quite surprised to awaken in the Accident & Emergency unit of the local hospital back in 2007.

* * *

There followed the most disorienting period of Alex Drake's life. Given who she was and her past experiences, that was saying a _lot_.

It all began after returning to her house with Molly after being released from hospital (and being scolded by a doctor for allowing herself to become mildly malnourished). Evan had been helpful but, frankly, Alex had been glad when he had agreed to leave. Alex was surprised when Molly, who had previously shown no domestic inclinations, had cooked a meal and hovered anxiously at her mother's side until it was all eaten.

Alex felt immensely guilty at seeing Molly's very obvious guilt and stress. It wasn't her daughter's fault that her mother was caught between two times, between her only blood kin and a man she had come to love. She firmly clamped down on her urge to reprove the girl for treating her like an invalid (but wasn't she?). Instead, she poured all her love into her actions and did everything she could to reassure the girl. Alex restrained a giggle when her hyper-serious daughter extracted a solemn vow from her to take better care of her health in future. It was a strange moment when Alex realised that she recognised the look on Molly's face. It had been the same stony, devastated expression that… that _Alex's own past self _had been wearing when she and Gene had to tell the 10-year-old girl that her parents were dead.

"I… I don't want to lose you, Mummy," the girl nearly whispered.

"You won't Molly," Alex assured her.

"But… I nearly have! Twice!" Molly was about to flee but Alex easily captured her and enfolded her in her arms, letting her cry herself out and feeling the suspicious sting of tears in her own eyes.

Alex, having learnt to be a disciplinarian (_And no little girl of yours will have to scrape by on a copper's pay, right Bolls?_ – Shut up, Gene) ensured that Molly had not been falling behind on her homework and then personally tucked her daughter into bed. The girl looked up at her mother worriedly. "You'll be there when I wake up?" she almost demanded.

"Forever and ever, or until you grow up, whichever comes first," Alex confirmed with a smile, earning a tired giggle from her little girl, before kissing Molly good night.

Alex finished cleaning up downstairs before retiring. This week promised to be difficult. At least with police work, she had a mental distraction from her own mixed feelings. A week on sick leave meant that she would have a little bit _too_ much time to think.

Alex changed into her pyjamas (noting with an ironic smile their similarity to those she owned in the '80s) and slipped into bed.

Alex was awoken by her alarm clock… which was odd because she hadn't set it last night… and the last time she heard the alarm, it didn't sound anything like the ringing of a 1980s-era BT Trimfone like the one on her bedside table in her 1982 flat. Half-asleep, Alex fumbled the slim angular receiver off of its cradle and automatically dragged it to her ear. "Drake," she mumbled.

"Good morning, Bolly, this is your six-thirty alarm call," the voice of Gene Hunt spat in her ear. "I expect to see you in the office no later than eight. Be there."

* * *

For the next four months, Alex Drake was a woman adrift between two worlds. The moment she closed her eyes to sleep in one, she would be awakening to a new day in the other. The experience tested even the hyper-organised Alex to the limits. At least the week of sick leave she was enjoying in the 21st Century stopped her from having to mentally organise the separate case loads in _two different time zones_, at least at first.

As it was, she was glad that she only lived with Molly in the 21st Century. An adult would have been more suspicious of Alex's liberal use of 21st Century information technology to aid her in her 1982 cases, let alone her habit of leaving flow-charts and brainstorming notes around the house. To Molly, this simply fitted in with 'Mum being Mum'.

When Alex was allowed back on duty in 2007, the stress levels suddenly doubled. Trying to keep her two case loads mentally and organisationally separate was nearly impossible. In more than one occasion, she found herself trying to get a dumbfounded Shaz or Viv to get information on cases that wouldn't even occur for a quarter of a century. Worse was trying to get her 2007 detectives to give her updates on cases that surely had been closed for longer than some of them had been alive.

Then, one day, Alex had an unpleasant surprise.

She came home to find Molly, her face streaked with tears, sitting besides a pocket tape recorder. The same tape recorder on which Alex had been habitually recording her thoughts in a desperate attempt to sort out what was happening to her before she had a nervous breakdown. Given the pile of tapes sitting beside the girl, she had pretty much gone through the entire record of Alex's adventures in the 1980s and her more recent time hopping.

Alex initially thought that Molly's reaction was fear that her mother was going insane, an entirely understandable fear. However, she could not be more wrong. Molly believed her mother's stories to be true. She somehow _knew _that Alex was living two lives in two different time-zones. She was terrified that Alex was going to stay in 1982 one day and _never come back_.

"Molly," Alex protested, "I'd never leave you! I love you!"

"But you love _HIM_!" Molly protested.

"W… What…?"

"Mummy, you love that man, that Gene! I can hear it in your voice when you talk about him!" Molly managed a hollow laugh through her tears. "I can even hear about it when he annoys you and you're complaining about him! It's just like how Mercy talks about Colin when he's being a bloody prat!"

Alex was shocked at her daughter's perspicuity, so shocked that she didn't remember to tell her off for bad language or wonder at the likely teen melodrama in which she was clearly peripherally involved. Alex stepped forward and sat down next to Molly, took the girl's limp hand in her own and looked her daughter right in the eyes. "Molly, you know that I love you. I am so very, very happy and proud that you believe that this is really happening to me. That you trust me is very important, you know that, right?" Molly nodded. "Molly, when I was first in the 1980s, nothing was more important to me that I get back to you. Yes, it's true that I feel very close to Gene Hunt… Maybe I do like him in the way you think. But there is _nothing_, not in this world or in that one, that would make me give you up. Do you understand?"

Molly nodded. "I love you, Mummy," she said.

"Oh, I love you too baby." She folded the girl in a hug.

"Mum?" Molly said a while later, after the two had sat opposite each other in a strained silence during supper.

"Yes, Molly?"

"Um… this sounds silly…" Alex raised an eyebrow to her daughter. "Um… Do you think that this Gene bloke would like _me_? He sounds really cool, in a kind of rough-tough outlaw way. Better than all the Emo wimps at school, at least!"

* * *

Molly seemed to absorb Alex's stories of the 1980s in a way that Alex didn't know whether to find amusing or alarming. Molly clearly had a talent for research and, maybe, for acting. Alex was surprised at the number of 1980s idioms that Molly had integrated into her speech. The girl even looked up what passed for teen fashions in the era to which her mother was time-hopping and began to integrate aspects of it into her personal 'look' (Alex drew the line at the New Romantics-style make-up, jewellery and hairdos). Alex didn't know if it was an expression of teenage alienation with a time-jumping twist or whether Molly really did find the 21st Century as 'boring' as she claimed.

All-in-all, Alex was glad that she had not recorded anywhere her theories on how it was that the time-jumping began for her. She feared that Molly might foolishly try to replicate a violent near-death experience in an attempt to follow her into the past that Alex feared was becoming more _real_ and attractive to Molly, despite its very real relative primitivism, than the present.

Oddly enough, Molly's strange behaviour actually _helped_ Alex, at least in the 1980s. She found herself able to talk to Gene about Molly for the first time, explaining that the girl had become a bit rebellious and troublesome and that was the reason for her occasionally distracted performance. She was surprised about how easy her relationship was getting with her DCI. Oh, there was still concern about the remnants of the Lodge, who it was feared, were hovering around and seeking revenge for the failure of the Lord Douglas Lane job. However, despite all the close calls and cultural clashes, she felt that she and the rest of the team were just getting into their stride.

The new openness about Molly actually allowed Alex to occasionally get past Gene's protective wall of suspicious cynicism. She understood now why he had been so closed to her in the past. Gene was a man of fairly unsophisticated but always-profound emotions. To him, if you loved someone, then they had to be at the centre of your thoughts. Alex's ability to compartmentalise and suppress her concern for Molly (at least in public) after her arrival in the 1980s had convinced him that there was something _off_ about her. If _he _had a little girl who was somewhere else, he wouldn't have been able to _stop_ thinking about her and talking about her!

The thing that Alex feared most from this new openness very quickly came to pass. Chris and Shaz's wedding was close at hand. Shaz had suggested that Molly join her mother in London for the ceremony, maybe even act as bridesmaid or something. Sargent Viv James had suggested that the girl might want to spend some time with his twin daughters (although Ray later remarked that a 'posh girl' like Molly might not get on well with a pair of black girls from London). This triggered an incident at the post-shift booze-up at Luigi's that night.

"Ray Carling, I'll have you know that there isn't a prejudiced bone in Molly's body!"

"Look, all I'm saying is…!"

"Drop it, Raymundo," Gene snapped. "Bolly doesn't have a problem with Viv… or a prat like you. Why should her little girl?" Gene looked up at Alex with a grim smile, hope shining in his eyes. "How about it though, Bolls? Think the little Princess is ready to spend time with the Gene-Genie and the crew? Afraid that we might teach her what _real_ life is like?"

Alex didn't know how she manoeuvred her way out of that trap. She still hadn't decided if Gene believed her story about being from the future. Some days he acted like he did and others he seemed not to, to the point where he would get angry at even the mention of the future.

Back in the future… or the present… what was it anyway? Anyway, the school holidays were upon them. Alex had already decided that she would spend two blissful weeks with Molly, away from the job, away from the city and as far away from the strains of her current time-split life as she could get. She didn't think that she would stop time-hopping just because she was on leave from the job in the 21st Century, but at least she would be able to minimise the stress. For that reason, she put in her holiday request in the 1980s for what she judged was the same time period.

Alex got the impression that her 21st Century colleagues were relieved that she would be off their backs. Oh, she wasn't as much of a harpy as she had been at first, but she still demanded results as Gene Hunt always did of his team. She hoped that she was showing them that there was no middle ground, no 'toleration' of criminality. She hoped that, maybe, the good part of policing in the 1980s might yet be rediscovered by her subordinates.

So, Alex loaded Molly into her BMW 5-series saloon and the two set off for Folkestone and the beginning of what, hopefully, would be two stress-free weeks in the south of France.

Alex was a careful driver, all the more so with Molly aboard. Furthermore, Gene's gruff example had taught her to use a car like a lethal weapon, to attack every curve, every traffic signal and every junction – to drive defensively was to invite disaster in a pursuit. However, no matter how good you are, you have to be lucky _every time_. The lorry driver from Eastern Europe probably never saw her car, she later reflected. Hell, she bet that the bastard probably only had the vaguest understanding of British traffic laws.

Alex's last coherent memory was Molly's scream as the 60-foot long giant side-swiped their car as it suddenly changed lane in front of them and sent the BMW careering through a crash barrier towards the hard concrete of the other motorway below… Then there was only blackness.


	2. Is There Life On Mars?

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Ashes to Ashes

Of Which Two Worlds?

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**Disclaimer**

'Ashes to Ashes' was created by Kudos Film & Television for BBC Worldwide. All characters and situations from the series are the copyright property of the above. No breach of copyright or trademark is intended. This is a not-for-profit fan work for free distribution through the World-wide Web.

**Author's Notes**

This is a story that suddenly came to me in a flash of inspiration today. The first chapter is more-or-less a summary of what I think may take place in Season 3 of 'Ashes to Ashes'. The second chapter… is the beginning of the first episode of _Season 4_.

Censor: T – A little Gene and Alex potty mouth but that is all

**Chapter 2 – Is There Life On Mars?**

Molly Drake's eyes snapped open and found herself, bizarrely, on a train. The train could not have been more different from those she was used to. The car was dingy, poorly-lit by filament bulbs rather than florescent lights, and was finished in a dull pale yellow Formica-like plastic. The seats were stiff and uncomfortable and there was the all-pervasive smell of tobacco smoke. Molly grimaced in disgust at the full ashtray screwed to the wall just a few inches away from her face.

Molly's mind reeled. She had no idea where she was. The last coherent memory that she had been… the car crash! Mum! Where was her mum?

Molly lurched forward as the train screeched to a stop. She looked out of the window and saw a dirty station sign that informed her that this was 'London Liverpool Street' and thanked her for travelling on something called 'Network South-East'. The girl staggered to her feet, looking around herself in disorientation and panic. She nearly ran for the door and waited for it to automatically open. It didn't and the girl was puzzled until another passenger reached around her with an annoyed grunt, twisted the metal handle embedded in the door's structure and pushed it open. Slam-door train carriages! They were _museum-pieces_! Molly could _just about_ remember seeing them on the line out of Waterloo when she was still little but…?

Molly stood on the platform, looking around her. She had been to Liverpool Street many times before but _this_ wasn't it. This was an old, decaying, smoke-blackened brick-and-iron tomb, nothing like the clean brightly-lit plate glass-framed station that she was used to.

"Love!" Molly looked around to see an unknown heavily-built Afro-Caribbean woman in a strange, pseudo-military black uniform with blue piping and a weird white emblem like two horizontal lines connected by a central vertical zigzag. The woman waved at her. "Love! Are you Molly Drake?" she asked in a thick Jamaican accent. Molly nodded, nervous. "Love, you forgot your luggage! You shouldn't forget it, you know. You'd be surprised the number of suitcases that end up in lost property that no one ever picks up!"

Molly, feeling weird, thanked the woman after she helped her get the suitcase that had a tag with her name on it down from the overhead luggage rack. It was the most god-awful _ugly _piece of plaid-patterned canvas-and-nylon that she had ever seen with her two eyes. Molly went back out onto the dingy platform again and looked around herself, feeling utterly lost.

A man in a pinstripe suit roughly pushed past the disoriented teenager and Molly watched as he pitched a newspaper into a wood-framed rubbish bin. On an instinct (maybe Mum's cop training getting to her?) Molly picked up the paper and looked at the date. The date was right, just not the year. According to the paper, it was 3rd July… _**1982**_.

Oh, it had seemed cool in Mum's stories. But being here… _then_… twelve years _before she was born_, was utterly terrifying. She had read-up about this time on the 'Net. Almost nothing that she knew existed at this time – MP3 players were two decades away! Hell the Sony Walkman was only _just_ being released for the first time! Computers were stone-aged relics that could do colour graphics if you were _patient_. You needed hundreds of quid's specialised kit to access a primitive ancestor of the Internet called 'Tel-Net'. What were laughably called 'portable phones' were machines the size of a _briefcase_! SMS messaging hadn't even been _thought _of yet. Hell… the first digital watch (no alarm, no stopwatch and no date) had only _just_ been introduced!

Molly felt herself began to shiver. Even when her Mum had been in a coma after being shot, she had never felt so utterly… _alone_. Half on instinct, she staggered towards the end of the platform. Instead of the automatic ticket barriers, there were booths with scowling and unfriendly-looking inspectors. Molly had no idea what to do, or even whether she _had_ a ticket.

_Calm down_, she hissed angrily in her head. _Think! You don't want to end up getting arrested or anything! Who would you call to get you out?_

Keeping away from the ticket booth, she searched her possessions. Apart from her hideous suitcase, she also had a bright pink canvas shoulder bag. She unzipped it and sorted through the archaic miscellaneous stuff inside. This included a make-up bag, two well-thumbed paperback novels with unfamiliar titles and a first-generation Sony Walkman _audio tape player_ (with two 16-track tapes whose titles she only knew from the racks of antediluvian 'music' that Uncle Evan had by his home entertainment station back in 2007). Then, she saw something that she'd seen her paternal grandmother use once - a clip-top purse! She snapped the plaid-coloured faux-leather plastic horror open and found unfamiliar-sized coins and notes inside (a… _£1 note_? Weren't they supposed to be _coins_? Who would want something as worthless as a _pound_ as a note?). She also found a roll of paper with dim blue printing on it that announced it was printed by 'British Railways'. She figured that this was probably what she wanted.

With an expression of triumph, she brandished the ticket at the inspector, who barked at her in an annoyed tone when she tried to pass through the barrier. The man stuck out his hand and collected the ticket before gesturing peremptorily for her to keep moving.

Half-carrying, half-dragging her heavy suitcase (no wheels on this thing), Molly walked out into the dull, drab concourse of Liverpool Street Station in the year 1982. She had no idea where to go. She had no idea who (if anyone) she could call or even how she would operate the public 'phones in this era (one look at the nightmares with _rotor dials_ and _coin slots_ in filthy cigarette butt-filled metal booths with more broken glass than windows had dissuaded her from experimentation).

Molly realised that she had been through this station more times than she could remember.

But, right now, it was as comforting and as familiar to her as if it were on Mars.

* * *

Alex Drake snapped awake on her bed over Luigi's with a heart-wrenching scream of dread. "_Molly!_"

The black-haired woman nearly _fell_ out of her bed. Her mind was reeling with the memories of the crash, of Molly's scream. It seemed that, as with Sam, disaster in one time had sent her crashing to her refuge in another. However… Molly didn't _have_ that refuge… "Oh God!" she moaned. "Oh God no! Why? Haven't I done _enough_? What do you _want from me_?!?"

_Bleep-bleep-bleep_

Alex turned to her hi-fi, (an irrelevant memory intruded of Ray's being impressed about Alex having a unit with integrated tape player and radio as well as record player) and stared at it, listening to the sounds coming from its speakers. That sounded like… a heart monitor…?

Alex listened, horrified, to the voices of doctors fighting… fighting _to save her life_! She silently and then, increasingly, vocally, begged herself to hold on, to keep fighting. However, with an increasing cold sense of dread, she realised that it wasn't working. She knew enough about medicine to know it wouldn't be enough. Adrenaline wasn't keeping the heart beating regularly, bleeding couldn't be stopped quickly enough and too many bones were broken… As time went by, the voices grew quieter and quieter, increasingly drowned out by static.

_Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…!_

"_Time index?_"

"_Three minutes, fifty seconds._"

"_It's no good, Doctor. She's gone._"

There was a long pause. "_Record time of death; 9:15am._"

"No…" The sound quality had degraded almost to inaudibility now, static filling the channel. Horrified, on the edge of hysteria, Alex grabbed the hi-fi unit and began to shake it in either fury or terror. "No! NO! _NO!_"

Even through the roar of static the final voice was quite clear to Alex's ears before the machine suddenly went silent.

"_It is probably for the best. She wouldn't have wanted to live with her little girl dead. The emergency contact said that she was all she had in the world._"

Then the machine went silent and, in her heart, Alex knew that there would never be the mysterious voices from another time ever again.

"No! NO! _MOOOLLLLLLYYY_!!!"

* * *

"Chris, you pillock! We're late! What if we've missed her?"

"Look, Shaz, it wasn't my fault that there was a bloody traffic jam on the ring road!"

As she munched on her crisps (an unfamiliar brand that she still couldn't believe had only cost her 15p), Molly had to admit that her mother was very good at word pictures. She had described Chris Skelton and Sharon Granger so clearly that she had no doubt in her mind that was who she had standing in front of her. If there was any remaining doubt that this was _real_ it was with the appearance of these two. After all, if this were a dream, she would have had her Mum and that funny Ray guy waiting to meet her rather than leave her waiting for a quarter of an hour for Fenchurch East CID's comedy romance duo. "Um… er… excuse me?"

Chris and Shaz turned to look at a fairly typical example of British Teenage Girl, circa 1982. Seeing her reflection in the concourse newsagent's window had shocked the hell out of Molly. The frizzy, over-permed blonde hair, the dark blue eye-shadow, the bright pink blush on her cheeks making her cheekbones look unfeasibly high and the dangling crucifix earrings were something right out of her research of teen fashions of this era. Frankly, she thought she looked like a freak… or a fan of that weird pop singer… what was his name…? Oh yeah, 'Adam Ant'. Of course, this 'New Romantic' look was all the rage amongst girls of her age in this time period but that didn't make Molly, a fairly conventional and middle-of-the-road girl, feel any better being dressed in a style that verged on the _Goth_.

"Yeah, love?" Shaz asked. Seeing the nervous girl immediately activated her 'policewoman' instincts. "Are you lost, love? Looking for someone?" Automatically, Shaz was reviewing the procedures for a lost minor in her head. There were always some at the train stations, runaways most of them. The Guv hated kids ending up on their own; he knew only too well what the toe-rags in this city would do with them.

"I… Are _you_ looking for someone?" the girl countered. "I… I suppose that there _should _be someone meeting me, I guess…" Molly knew that her mother would never allow her to travel alone without having someone meet her. That her mother might not know she was here in the 1980s had not occurred to the girl… yet.

"Actually, yeah," Chris said. "We're here to pick up Molly Drake. Do y'know her, love?"

"Know her?" Molly grinned and jumped to her feet. She hugged a surprised and blushing Chris hard. "She's me! I'm Molly! You're Chris aren't you? Mum's told me all about you! It's _so_ freaky to actually finally meet you! But it's cool too! Woah! This is _so_ going to make a blog entry for Facebook!"

Shaz didn't know exactly how to react to the vivacious teenager suddenly manhandling her fiancé. "Um… Molly?"

"Yeah? You're Sharon, right! Shaz! That's right! That's what Mum says they call you! Weird! It's like… something out of _Birds of a Feather_! Everything is just so _freaky_ back here! But, this is so _wicked_ cool! Er… I mean… _brill_!"

Chris and Shaz looked at each other in a knowing way. Very loudly dressed, slightly disoriented and saying things that, whilst in English, didn't actually seem to _mean_ anything that they understood. _This is DI Drake's little girl all right_, they thought simultaneously. Shaz turned back to the girl. "Well, your Mum's told us to pick you up and take you to meet her at the station," Sharon said. She noted the girl's sudden closed expression with worry. "Molly?"

"Um… What's my Mum's name? I mean, like, I know it's uncool to be suspicious, but Mum always told me…"

"Her name is Alex Drake," Chris said switching to his 'serious authority figure' face. "Detective Inspector Alexandra Drake, in full."

Shaz laughed at her fiancé's serious expression and turned to Molly, seeing bits of the DI's face through that overdone make-up that girls today seemed to like. "She'll be pleased to know that you're a clever girl who is careful about these things!"

Molly seemed slightly offended. "Hey! I'm getting straight-As in all my GCSEs!"

_Her whats?_ Both coppers wondered.

Chris shook his head and offered to take Molly's suitcase. He grinned at the way the bubbly girl was bombarding Shazza with questions. Something told him that Molly Drake would profoundly change things around the patch.

* * *

Alex didn't know how long she had laid on the carpet in front of the silent hi-fi, weeping for her daughter. Surprisingly, she found that she didn't mind so much about losing her life in the 21st Century; hell, she had felt like an alien there from the first moment she had woken up in the hospital bed. Molly was innocent, though. Whoever was responsible for this should have left Molly alone.

Finally, almost on autopilot, she went to prepare some coffee and breakfast for herself. She still had her day ahead of her, even though she had a hard time focussing on her plans for this day, just a week from Chris and Shaz's wedding. She decided that, if she were going to commit suicide, it would not be until afterwards, when they were on their honeymoon. Don't let their happiness be spoilt by her despair.

As Alex sat on her couch, staring blindly ahead of her. No matter how desperately she wanted to be free of the pain, she couldn't do it. Not right now. She couldn't spoil Chris and Shaz's day with her selfishness. She tried to visualise Gene's reaction and the agony in her heart nearly broke her all over again. No… she couldn't do that to Gene either. Not to a man who had been betrayed and hurt so many times before. Not to a man who she had started to… to _love_. Molly had been right about that. Perhaps… in a way, she owed it to her little girl to find out if he would be as good for her as Molly thought he would…

_Molly_!

Alex made a sound between a sob and a shriek of pain and lost herself for a moment again.

After a few moments, she staggered to her feet and wandered towards her bedroom. Despite her firmest efforts, her eyes drifted towards the big calendar she had on the notice-board between the doors to the bedroom and the kitchen nook. Once, that calendar had counted down the days to her parents' deaths. In more recent times, when Alex found herself alternating between times, she had used it to keep track of what was going to be happening in her other life. She looked at the clear blue line ruling through the next two weeks marked 'Holiday with Mols' and felt the need to cry start to build up again. "I won't forget you," she grated out. "I won't forget… you…?"

Pinned up underneath the calendar was a neat typed letter. The letterhead identified it as being from the Local Education Authority of the London Borough of Islington, the local authority for this area of London. The letter was addressed to her and was in the usual dry, bureaucratic language that Alex was used to in official communications of both eras. However, the content could not be more surprising.

"We are pleased to confirm the transfer of your daughter, Molly Drake, to Grange Hill Secondary Comprehensive School from the start of the Autumn Term, 1982. All records from her previous school have now been received as have her course choices for her GCE and O-Level studies.

"Attached to this letter is a list of uniform and textbook requirements for Molly. If you require any fiscal assistance in obtaining uniform items or if you wish to claim for Single Parent's Child Benefit, please contact the borough's Department of Health and Social Security at the Town Hall Annexe…"

Alex's mouth dropped open. What _was_ this? She hadn't applied to transfer Molly to any of the local schools. How _could_ have she? _Why_ would she have done so anyway? It wasn't as if she had any of the necessary documents like birth certificates! She didn't know what miracle gave her such perfect documents in this era for a woman with her name allegedly born in 1947. However, it had certainly made life a lot easier.

With a strange sense of inevitability, Alex went to the kitchen and opened the bottom cupboard where she kept important documents. Exactly as she predicted, in the padlocked briefcase, was a birth certificate for one Molly Caroline Drake, born in 1969. Alex sat cross-legged on the cold linoleum and pressed the mysterious document to her breast, not knowing what to think, not knowing whether to dare to hope.

Alex's paralysis was broken by the irritating whirring ring tone of her Trimfone. After a few moments, she stood up and, not daring to let go of the birth certificate, went to pick up the phone. "Dr… Drake."

"Ma'am! It's Shaz!"

Remembering her earlier resolution, Alex kept her tone light. "Shaz, hi! What can I do for you!"

"Just letting you know that we picked her up at the train station like you asked and we'll be meeting you over at the station so you can introduce her to everyone!"

"What?" Alex shook her head. What the hell was going on here? Alex overrode Shaz's confused repetition of her previous words. "Shaz, please listen for a moment." Alex sucked in a deep breath. "Shaz, it's important that you answer this question as clearly and completely as possible. Who have you picked up?"

"You know! Molly! Your little girl! Oh, Ma'am! _Thank you_ for agreeing to let her be my bridesmaid! It's going to be so wonderful!"

"M… Molly… Molly is with you?"

"Yeah, that's right! She's a right lively one too! Talking our ears off she is!" Shaz's voice changed as she held the 'phone receiver away from her face. "'Ere, Mol! Say 'allo to your Mum!"

"Hey Mum!" Molly's excited voice blared from the speaker. "It's great here! Grim but _great_, just like you said! You will not _believe_ how cheap stuff is! Mostly old stuff, but that's okay really. Oh, this is _so_ cool!"

Alex was on the verge of laughter… or tears… or both… She had no idea! "M… Molly, could… could you give the 'phone back to Shaz, please love? Thank you."

"Shaz?" Alex smiled, suddenly feeling lighter and younger than she had ever felt before. "Shaz, I'll see you at the station. And Shaz, _keep her away from Ray!_ I… I don't want her scaring him. Yes, I'm sure that I got that the right way around."

After hanging up, Alex practically launched herself at her wardrobe. She had places to be, after all, and more to do in this holiday than she had ever expected. She had a lot to explain to her daughter. She didn't know how the girl would react to being time-lost. Hell, she wasn't sure how _she herself_ would react after she had come to terms with the fact that their family had been flung a quarter of a century into the past. However, together, they would make it work.

Alex grinned, suddenly looking forward to seeing how Gene reacted to _two_ intelligent, forceful Drake females in the room at the same time.

Maybe, she mused, there was such a thing as second chances.

**The Beginning...**

**

* * *

**

Afterword

I might have some ideas for future stories of Alex and Molly in the 1980s, but no promises for now. These ideas include Molly's interactions with the team and Molly's own involvement in the pressing teenage issues of this era. These include the increasing illegal drug problems in inner cities, the fear of this era that lived under the shadow of Mutually Assured Destruction and a time when sex was, perhaps, just losing its taboo.

For the record, 'Grange Hill' was a soap opera set in an Inner London Comprehensive School. It has only just recently been cancelled after a run of something like 30 years. As Ashes to Ashes itself is not really the 1980s but an exaggerated televisual version thereof, I thought it be appropriate that Molly's new school be Britain's most famous TV school.

How she'll survive without the Internet, text messaging and Facebook, I've no idea. However, Alex adapted and something tells me that Molly is as every bit as tough as her mum.

If anyone wants to tell a story of Alex and Molly's new lives, please feel free but I would be grateful for a mention in the author's note.


End file.
